Rich Hofmann

DAILY NEWS SPORTS EDITOR

Rich Hofmann arrived at the Daily News in 1980 for a job whose status was officially designated as "full-time, temporary." A senior at Penn at the time, he was hired to fill in on the copy desk during a staff illness. The notion of him covering the Eagles or being a columnist did not exist in anyone's imagination. It was supposed to be six weeks and out, but he never left. It is only one of the reasons why so many people have concerns about him as a potential house guest.

Sam Farmer in the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Michael Vick will meet with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell today, prior to the Eagles' game against the Jets, and that Vick will be told when he is being reinstated by the commissioner.

This is all happening faster than I thought it would. While there is no hint about what the reinstatement date might be -- it could be anywhere from the first week to the sixth week of the season -- it sure seems as if it's going to be sooner rather than later. And Goodell is on the record already as saying that he thought Vick was taking the right steps.

The conventional wisdom has been wrong a couple of times already about Vick -- that the Eagles would never be interested, that the off-the-field protests and stuff would be paralyzing, that the fan base was painfully divided by the move. So, for what it's worth, my conventional wisdom all along was a reinstatement for Week 3.